High-temperature thermoelectric properties of Cu₁–xInTe₂ with a chalcopyrite structure

We investigated the high-temperature thermoelectric properties of Cu1–xInTe2 (x = 0, 0.05, 0.1, 0.2) at 310–710 K. The electrical properties of this system were optimized by the presence of substoichiometric amounts of copper and additional phonon scattering by lattice defects and a secondary phase reduced the thermal conductivity of the system. The samples of Cu1–xInTe2 (x = 0, 0.05, 0.1, 0.2) all had dimensionless figures of merit in excess of 0.5 at 710 K with a maximum value of 0.54 for x = 0.1.